Search Forum Now Using Google. Why?

  • At the right top of the forum, there is a search field. Usually, before posting a new topic in this forum, I search for entry with same topics. At the past, the search worked perfectly. I can grab almost every entry which has same topics by filling up keywords.

    But now it seems that the search function is using Google. Why should we use Google? Is it better?

Viewing 15 replies - 31 through 45 (of 49 total)
  • Thread Starter jalansutera

    (@jalansutera)

    Matt, where are you. We want to hear your opinion. ??

    Hopefully it’s known that this came up when Matt made the switch:

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/33846

    Since the other search does still exist (Thanks bambam!) it would just be nice if there was a link to it somewhere convenient.

    breezeman: if the choice is between making a few advertising bucks and having a search page that shows results as recently posted as the last minute, I go for the latter. Besides, there’s no reason ads can’t be placed in the bbPress search page, is there?

    Since breezeman does not know the reason for the switch, can we leave off on the “it’s all about money” theory?

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    I’ve worked with this Google site search program before, and unless they’ve changed their program, WordPress does not make any money off of the ads presented via Google’s free site-searching code. Any revenue generated by clicking an ad inside the Google-generated search results for this site goes straight into Google’s pocket. Matt will never see a dime of it. So, we can definitely forget about the “it’s all about money” theory.

    If I had a question, it would be: Why Google? I mean, Google is like… order of magnitudes less relevant than Ask, Yahoo!, MSN, or Vivisimo. And there are many more.

    Then, there is Grokker. The public Grokker is essentially an interface to Yahoo!, but it’s very sweet. It’s visual layout could be extremely interesting, as a tool to dig through a forum.

    Also, there are lesser known search engine technologies. I’d be surprised if outsiders refused to sponsor a search engine for wordpress, if only for the notoriety.

    And last but not least, there’s the open source Nutch…

    So I search for [ANN]. Perhaps I am looking for a quick list of plugins that have been announced old-school-like. Wait! Where’s that [ANN] Collapse It thread? It’s right here on the main support page, but why can’t I find it on the search page?

    Bleh.

    If we’re going to have to use Google Search for the support forums, at least make sure the results include recent posts. Like I said, using Google for sites that don’t change very often is fine, but for forums it sucks unless you’re looking for old posts or don’t mind that the most recent ones (what’s the refresh rate here, 1 day? 7?) won’t be included in the results.

    If that issue can be solved, then by all means let’s embrace Google because it’s a good search engine. If there’s no way to fix that rather severe problem, then it’s obviously going to suck for these purposes.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    It’s such a shame that no one spoke up about this before when so many members were busy carrying around the Google search alternative on a golden platter.

    I still wish we didn’t use this forum software. I know it was written by the devs (or at least I thought it was) and that it’s simple, but simple isn’t always better. Too many lacking features. :/

    @viper: Unless I am mistaking, the rational behind using bbPress is that it scales a lot better than other forum scripts.

    I must have been searching when this got changed over, got me very confused. I liked the display of the bbpress search better but the google search has better results, perhaps with more releases the bbpress search will get better and they can use it again.

    Well, it’s back to the other way again.

    And for those in charge reading through this thread – we like the old way, but can you make it a little more useful by giving us 10 choices at least in each section instead of the five…or did you up the number of returns and I missed it. Anyway, that would be more helpful.

    Thanks for going back. The Google thing would have been nice if it provided a choice of the forum or the codex and “looked” like this forum instead of the overkill white google page.

    The new search function sucks. This is by far alot worse then the old search. Please change it back!

    My search for user profile.. returns 0 results.. wtf.

Viewing 15 replies - 31 through 45 (of 49 total)
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